great importance to the burial of
the dead, and after a battle, that party which demanded a truce for
collecting and burying its dead was thought to have admitted itself to
have been defeated. Naturally, therefore, the proposal was regarded as
humiliating by the Spartans of 395 B.C.]

[Footnote 160: It should be remembered that Chaeronea was Plutarch's
own city, and that he was a priest at Delphi, and, consequently, was
especially familiar with the country here described.]

[Footnote 161: _Hoplites_, in Greek, usually means a warrior fully
armed.]

LIFE OF SULLA.

I. Lucius Cornelius Sulla,[162] by birth, belonged to the Patricians,
whom we may consider as corresponding to the Eupatridae. Among his
ancestors is enumerated Rufinus,[163] who became consul; but is less
noted for attaining this honour than for the infamy which befell him.
He was detected in possessing above ten pounds' weight of silver
plate, which amount the law did not permit, and he was ejected from
the Senate. His immediate descendants continued in a mean condition,
and Sulla himself was brought up with no great paternal property. When
he was a young man he lived in lodgings, for which he paid some
moderate sum, which he was afterwards reproached with, when he was
prospering beyond his deserts, as some thought. It was after the
Libyan expedition, when he was assuming airs of importance and a
haughty tone, that a man of high rank and character said to him, How
can you be an honest man who are now so rich, and yet your father left
you nothing? For though the Romans no longer remained true to their
former integrity and purity of morals, but had declined from the old
standard, and let in luxury and expense among them, they still
considered it equally a matter of reproach for a man to have wasted
the property that he once had, and not to remain as poor as his
ancestors. Subsequently when Sulla was in the possession of power and
was putting many to death, a man of the class of Libertini, who was
suspected of concealing a proscribed person, and for this offence was
going to be thrown down the Tarpeian rock, reproached Sulla with the
fact that they had lived together for some time in one house; that he
had paid two thousand sestertii for his lodgings, which were in the
upper part of the house, and Sulla three thousand for the lower rooms;
and, consequently, that between their fortunes there was only the
difference of a thousand sestertii, which is